PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Manet said Monday that his country will implement military conscription starting next year, in an announcement that coincides with persistent border tensions with Thailand.

Relations between the neighbors have deteriorated sharply following an armed confrontation on May 28 in which one Cambodian soldier was killed in one of several small contested patches of land.

The sides have agreed to de-escalate their dispute to avoid further clashes, but continue to implement or threaten measures that have kept tensions high, alongside exchanging sharp words.

The dispute has also roiled Thailand’s domestic politics. Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra was suspended from office after making what critics saw as a disparaging comment about her country’s military in a phone call to Cambodia’s former Prime Minister Hun Sen, who leaked a recording of it.

Hun Manet, Hun Sen’s son and successor, said that starting in 2026, an existing law on conscription would be implemented to fill shortages and upgrade the military’s capabilities.

Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) member Pjeter Shala saw his conviction upheld but the sentence reduced from 18 to 13 years, the Kosovo Specialist Chambers tribunal in The Hague said on Monday.

The tribunal, staffed by international judges and lawyers, was set up in 2015 to handle cases under Kosovo law against fighters of the KLA.

The court said Shala’s original sentencing was “out of reasonable proportion to comparable cases.”

Shala was convicted in 2024 of war crimes during the during the 1998-99 Kosovo uprising against Serbian troops.

He was found guilty of torture, murder and arbitrary detention, which he committed as he ran a makeshift prison where people considered to be spies or collaborators with Serbs were housed.

Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba is considering dissolving the House of Representatives and holding a snap election if the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP) submits a no-confidence motion against his Cabinet, government and ruling party sources said Tuesday.

Ishiba is apparently sending a warning to the CDP at a time when battles between the ruling and opposition camps are intensifying ahead of the June 22 end of the current ordinary session of the Diet, or Japan’s parliament, and the subsequent House of Councilors election this summer.

Since the Liberal Democratic Party-Komeito coalition currently lacks a majority in the Lower House, a senior government official said, “Dissolving (the Lower House) would be the only option, as a no-confidence motion, if submitted, is expected to be approved (in that chamber).”

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The search for those missing after Yemen’s Houthi rebels sank a ship in the Red Sea has ended as at least four people are presumed dead and 11 others remain unaccounted for, the private security firms involved said Monday.

The announcement came as satellite photos show long, trailing oil slicks from where the bulk carrier Eternity C sank, as well as another where the sinking of the bulk carrier Magic Seas by the Iranian-backed Houthis took place.

Both ships were attacked over a week ago by the rebels as part of their campaign targeting vessels over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip that’s upended shipping in the Red Sea, through which $1 trillion of goods usually passes a year.

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Clashes between local militias and clans in Syria’s Sweida province have killed more than 30 people and injured nearly 100, and government forces were being sent to the area to restore order, authorities said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported at least 37 people killed, including two children, in the clashes between armed groups from the Druze religious minority and Sunni Bedouin clans around the province. The U.K.-based war monitor reported that military convoys were sent to the area to reinforce security checkpoints.

The observatory said the clashes had started after a series of kidnappings between both groups, which began when members of a Bedouin tribe in the area set up a checkpoint where they attacked and robbed a young Druze man.

Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the observatory, said the conflict started with the kidnapping and robbery of a Druze vegetable seller, leading to tit-for-tat attacks and kidnappings.

Syria’s defense and interior ministries were deploying personnel to the area to attempt to restore order.

A federal judge in Los Angeles ordered the Trump administration to stop carrying out immigration sweeps in which she said federal agents have been indiscriminately arresting people across southern California without reasonable suspicion that they’re in the country illegally.

Since early June, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Border Patrol and other federal agencies have been roving Los Angeles and surrounding counties arresting thousands of people in what civil rights lawyers characterized in a lawsuit last week as an unconstitutional and “extraordinary campaign of targeting people based on nothing more than the color of their skin.”

In her order, Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, said there is “a mountain of evidence” to support the claim that agents are arresting people solely based on their race, accents, or the work they’re engaged in, in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable government seizure.

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Colombian authorities said Friday they captured an alleged leader of the Italian ’ndrangheta mafia in Latin America who is accused of overseeing cocaine shipments and managing illegal trafficking routes to Europe.

Police identified the suspect as Giuseppe Palermo, also known as “Peppe,” an Italian who was wanted under an Interpol red notice, which called for his arrest in 196 countries.

He was apprehended on the street in Colombia’s capital Bogota during a coordinated operation between Colombian, Italian and British authorities, as well as Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, according to an official report.

The hajj, one of the largest annual human gatherings in the world, begins on Wednesday in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Amid rising temperatures and logistical challenges, the pilgrimage has increasingly become a test of endurance both for pilgrims and the Saudi government.

Millions of Muslims from around the world travel to the city to take part; Saudi Arabia said 1,475,230 pilgrims from abroad have arrived since Sunday. Last year, the Saudi government said more than 1,300 pilgrims died, many from Egypt. Most of those who perished had been unregistered, Saudi officials said, meaning they had made the trip without the permits that gave them access to heat protections.

Nobody in South Africa seems to know where Tiger is.

The 42-year-old from neighbouring Lesotho, whose real name is James Neo Tshoaeli, has evaded a police manhunt for the past four months.

Detained after being accused of controlling the illegal operations at an abandoned gold mine near Stilfontein in South Africa, where 78 corpses were discovered underground in January, Tiger escaped custody, police allege.

Four policemen, alleged to have aided his breakout, are out on bail and awaiting trial, but the authorities appear no closer to learning the fugitive’s whereabouts.

RUBAYA, Congo (AP) — Nestled in the green hills of Masisi territory in Congo, the artisanal Rubaya mining site hums with the sound of generators, as hundreds of men labor by hand to extract coltan, a key mineral crucial for producing modern electronics and defense technology — and fiercely sought after worldwide.

Rubaya lies in the heart of eastern Congo, a mineral-rich part of the Central African nation which for decades has been ripped apart by violence from government forces and different armed groups, including the Rwanda-backed M23, whose recent resurgence has escalated the conflict, worsening an already acute humanitarian crisis.

As the U.S. spearheads peace talks between Congo and Rwanda, Congo’s President Felix Tshisekedi has sought out a deal with the Trump administration, offering mineral access in return for American support in quelling the insurgency and boosting security.

While details of the deal remain unclear, analysts said Rubaya might be one of the mining sites which fall under its scope.

Eastern Congo has been in and out of crisis for decades. The conflict has created one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises with more than 7 million people displaced, including 100,000 who fled homes this year.

The Rubaya mines have been at the center of the fighting, changing hands between the Congolese government and rebel groups. For over a year now, it has been controlled by the M23 rebels, who earlier this year advanced and seized the strategic city of Goma and Bukavu in a major escalation of the conflict.

Despite the country’s exceptional mineral wealth, over 70% of Congolese live on less than $2.15 a day.

Chinese researchers have uncovered that eukaryotes originated around 2.72 billion years ago, earlier than the Great Oxidation Event, providing valuable insights into the evolutionary history of eukaryotes.

The findings were published in Nature on Wednesday.

The research team, composed of scientists from the East China Normal University, spent six years collecting sediment samples from salt marshes and mangrove wetlands across China.

Using techniques in computational biology, the team found that eukaryotes evolved before the diversification of all sampled Heimdallarchaeia.

A previous study suggested that eukaryotes are nested within Heimdallarchaeia, but their exact phylogenetic placement within Asgard archaea remains controversial.

The European Union has lifted economic sanctions on Syria in a bid to help the war-torn country’s recovery, Reuters reported citing Vice-President of the European Commission, Kaja Kallas, offering the nation another critical lifeline after the ouster of Bashar al-Assad.

This follows an announcement by the United States last week that it is lifting sanctions on Damascus.

MEXICO CITY — Leading human rights activist, Ruth López, has been arrested in El Salvador, after the Attorney General’s office accused her of embezzlement of state funds. López leads the anti-corruption and justice program for the human rights organization Cristosal.

López has been an outspoken critic of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. She and her organization have documented human rights abuses in El Salvador — including inhumane conditions in jails and the extended state of emergency, during which the government has suspended many constitutional rights and imprisoned tens of thousands of suspected gang members without following due process.

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski and a conservative historian, Karol Nawrocki, emerged as the front-runners in Poland’s presidential election Sunday, according to an exit poll, putting them on track to face off in a second round in two weeks.

A late exit poll by the Ipsos institute released three hours after polls closed showed Trzaskowski with an estimated 31.1 percent of the votes and Nawrocki with 29.1 percent. That suggested that the runoff on June 1 could be very tight. Official results are expected on Monday or Tuesday.

LISBON, Portugal (AP) — The incumbent center-right Democratic Alliance won a general election in Portugal on Sunday, but it failed to secure a majority in Parliament and was set to take office as a minority government for the second time in a year.

Portugal’s third general election in three years dashed hopes that the ballot could end the worst spell of political instability for decades in the European Union country of 10.6 million people.

Syrian security forces have killed three ISIL (ISIS) fighters and arrested four others in Aleppo, authorities said, the first time the interim government has announced such an operation against the group in Syria’s second city.

The raids, launched by the General Security Department in coordination with the General Intelligence Service, targeted multiple ISIL sleeper cells operating across Aleppo, Syria’s Ministry of Interior said in a statement on Saturday.